Jason Kendall/Savannah Morning News A cold and bubbly pour of artisanal cider, like this Crispin, is perfect for a hot summer day. The 2012 Savannah Craft Brew Fest will feature a variety of hard ciders for sampling.

On an old dairy farm in Upstate New York, Gidon Coll is growing apples. His landscape of young trees, trellised in rows, looks more like a vineyard than an orchard, and the fruits bear exotic names like Virginia Crab, Roxbury Russet and Newtown Pippin.

The Newtown Pippin is a chance seedling — a genetic lucky break. It originated 270 years ago on Long Island, Coll explains, when 95 percent of apples in North America were grown for drinking rather than eating.

“It was Thomas Jefferson and George Washington’s favorite apple,” he says, “and they used to make ciders out of it.

“Till the mid-19th century, cider was more popular than beer in this country.”

In the late 1990s, Coll founded the creatively named Original Sin Corp. to help revive the Founding Fathers’ preferred alcoholic beverage. His brewery is bringing back heirloom apples using modern planting techniques, with dwarf trees spaced 3 to 4 feet apart, “similar to growing grapes,” he says.

“We’re even growing a Kazakh apple. Known to be completely disease resistant, they grow wild in the towns and mountains.”

Like the stuff they’re made from, today’s artisanal ciders have names — Landsdowne, Fox Barrel, The Saint — that sound more like medieval watering holes. They’re part of a growing line, including Original Sin, that will be highlighted during this year’s Savannah Craft Brew Week, which runs Aug. 26 through Sept. 2.

“What’s really interesting is we just got back from England, and ciders are very hot,” says Michael Volen, Brew Fest chairman and CEO of The Distillery on Liberty Street, the festival’s de facto home base. “Ciders have always been hot there. They’ve always had a good local cider on.

“I’ve got a friend of mine who absolutely swears on ciders. As soon as he gets in, the first thing he wants to know is do we have ciders on tap.”

But ciders — especially American ones — haven’t always enjoyed a good reputation among the craft brew crowd.

Unlike their drier European brethren, most modern New World versions run a gamut from sweet to sweeter.

“American tastes in general skew a little bit sweeter right now,” explains Jacob Sanford, certified beer nerd and general manager of The Distillery. “It’s all about the apples they use. If you have an apple with very little residual sugar, it’s going to create a drier, champagnier cider.”

That means you’ll need more than a trip to Kroger to fill your cider barrel.

“It’s not something you’ll see at the grocery store,” Sanford says. “Sure, you could make a cider out of a Fuji apple or a Granny Smith, but is it gonna be good?”

At the same time, the sweetness of mainstream American ciders like Woodchuck — available in most convenience stores — helps them reach out to drinkers who aren’t crazy for the hoppiness of an IPA. In Sanford’s words, they tend to be more “user-friendly,” and there’s a definite gender line.

“Ladies love cider,” he says. “It’s really refreshing and really crisp and looks pretty in the glass, but also you don’t feel sloshy and full when you drink a couple glasses of cider as compared to some people with beer.”

“It’s juice, it’s booze — what’s not to like?” says Erica Backus, director of public and media relations for Visit Savannah, which organizes the festival.

One tactic of artisanal cider lines like those produced by Original Sin and Minnesota-based Crispin Cider Company is to bridge the gap between sweet and sour by presenting the naturally sugary fruit juice alongside flavors like molasses, rice syrup and brewer’s yeast.

“When you take the base cider and you add this stuff, it creates a big difference,” Sanford says, “and I think it’s kind of a real neat thing that’s taken off. ... You would usually pitch this into a stout to give it that sort of stouty flavor, and instead they did it into a cider. It almost highlights the yeasts.”

Trying these artisanal ciders side-by-side exposes your palette to a surprising range of flavors — from sake to steak sauce. That’s a good match for the festival, which for the fifth year will be helping Coastal Empire drinkers develop an appreciation for different tastes through dialogue with more than 130 brews — and thousands of instant friends.

“Traditional ciders in this country were more in line with what a beer drinker could drink, what could be considered more sophisticated,” Coll says, praising the Brew Fest from New York. “The whole industry’s slowly gone in that direction, and new ciders are very much more in that mind frame. It’s having an impact. ... Cider’s absolutely become hot the last year or two. We actually can’t produce enough product to meet the needs.”

He’s expanding his orchard to include 50 different kinds of the fruit, but it’s just scratching the surface. There are more than 7,500 apple varieties worldwide — a pretty good guarantee that the cider masters’ creative barrels are in no danger of running dry.

The Distillery's beer gurus serve expert advice and a wide range of craft brews on tap and in bottles. www.distillerysavannah.com, 912-236-1772

NEW THIS YEAR

The 2-10 p.m. Sept. 2 Rhythm & Brews Concert is an outdoor show at the Westin’s Grand Prize of America Road Race Track featuring the Heavy Pets, Stokeswood and Jason D. Williams, as well as Sister Hazel and the North Mississippi Allstars. Bring chairs and blankets and enjoy craft brews and great live music. Doors open at 2, music starts at 3. Tickets are $40, $50 at the door, with bundling packages available with other Brew Fest events. For more info, visit www.savannahcraftbrewfest.com.